


First Blush

by Mercurie



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Bittersweet, First Kiss, Glasses, M/M, Meme, Wordcount: 100-1.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-26
Updated: 2010-04-26
Packaged: 2017-10-09 04:21:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/83009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mercurie/pseuds/Mercurie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Remus always saw Sirius through rose-colored glasses.</p>
            </blockquote>





	First Blush

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bold_seer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bold_seer/gifts).



> Written for the Five Acts fic meme.

"Pink's not your color," Remus said.

Sirius ignored him and continued to squint down through pink lenses. "Rose," he said. The leaves above their heads turned the sunlight green where it fell across his face. Between that and the glasses, and the black of his hair and the white flash of smiling teeth, he was a watercolor, a bright distraction come to entice Remus out of the gray pages of his book.

Remus kept his eyes fixed on miniscule type. "What?"

"They're rose. Rose-colored glasses." Sirius flopped down into the shade beside him. "Make the world look… peachy. Even you, stuck in a boring old book."

Remus risked a glance. Sirius, chin resting on his hand, was staring at him dreamily through the glasses perched on his nose. A little too dreamily.

Not being a fool, Remus went straight for the glasses.

"Hey!" Sirius snapped his eyes shut and groped around with a flailing, easily deflected hand.

Remus held the glasses at a distance and peered warily through the lenses. "You've spelled them."

"Of course I spelled them. You don't think I'd wear pink specs for the fun of it, do you?"

"You'd do anything. Given the right circumstances." Trusting that this wasn't an elaborate set-up for a prank, Remus settled the frame on his nose.

"Moony?" Sirius said after a moment of silence. His hand reached out into empty air again. "What are you doing? You haven't put those on, have you?"

Remus had put them on and forgotten, for a moment, to do anything except gaze at Sirius, wild-haired, eyes screwed shut, nose crinkled in irritation, suddenly shockingly beautiful. Not that Sirius wasn't normally good-looking, one could hardly avoid noticing that, but through the glasses—through the _glasses_\--

It was a simple enough charm, he recognized. The glass didn't focus light, it focused perception. The world had become an impressionist painting, fuzzier and yet more real, so real it opened up an ache in his chest, below his heart. The book on his lap was more than dusty pages, it was secretive, wise, graceful; the tree leaves were vivid and sweet; the sunlit, more music than color; Sirius—he heard himself gasp, a sound so soft he wasn't sure Sirius had even heard it.

"You put them on." He had heard it. It didn't seem to matter.

Remus realized his thumb had come to hover just above Sirius' cheekbone. Sirius' head turned slightly as if he could sense it.

"Why won't you open your eyes?" Remus said.

"I'm in no hurry to see the real world again. Are you?"

The real world didn't concern Remus at the moment. "You were looking at me just now."

Sirius said nothing. Sirius continued to say nothing because Remus kissed him, for the very first time—though far from the last.

***

Years later, in a bus station on a wet night in London, Remus discovered the glasses tucked into the lining of his travelling bag while searching, without much hope, for any Muggle money he might have missed. His hand came up tangled in tattered lining, crumpled paper, and slightly bent wire. Even in the dark, he knew what he'd got hold of, though he couldn't for the life of him remember when or why he'd put them into the bag.

He peered left and right into the pouring rain. No one about. He polished the glasses, put them on, and looked through them at the piece of paper he'd pulled out at the same time. A flyer displaying the sneering, hostile face of Sirius Black, along with the details of the crime he'd committed. He'd been carrying it around for—for however long it had been since that first day when he'd seen it screaming at him from a wall in Diagon Alley. Since then he'd spent far too long staring at it, hoping to feel something other than horror and anger. Something of that past he had just found, hidden in the grimy lining of his bag.

The pink of the glasses tinted the picture a faint rose color, as if the man in it was blushing. That was all. There was no transformation, none of the sudden beauty that had moved him to finally kiss that face so many years ago. The spell had long since worn off.

He threw the useless glasses into a bin. The poster he kept. These days he preferred the truth, he told himself. He'd learned its value at no small cost.


End file.
